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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561185">Molten Iron on Your Tongue</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful'>InsertSthMeaningful</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Accidental Voyeurism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Bottom Erik Lehnsherr, Erik Lehnsherr Cries His Way Through Sex, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Imbalance, Rough Sex, X-Men Apocalypse</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:35:37</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,945</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26561185</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik has a new God now, and yet he is not awed. En Sabah Nur intends to change that by employing a rather persuasive method, while Charles heeds Raven's demands and sets out to locate his <i>old friend</i> through Cerebro.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier, Erik Lehnsherr/En Sabah Nur</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>X-Men Kink Meme 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Molten Iron on Your Tongue</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMagenta/gifts">DoctorMagenta</a>.</li>



        <li>In response to a prompt by
            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/DoctorMagenta/pseuds/DoctorMagenta">DoctorMagenta</a>  in the  <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/collections/XMen_Kink_Meme_2020">XMen_Kink_Meme_2020</a>
          collection.
        </li>
    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>
  <strong>Prompt:</strong>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Erik thinks of Charles while letting En Sabah Nur take him. No rape please, Erik agrees to it and doesn't really care about Apoc, so he absolutely doesn't expect that he'll start thinking about Charles of all people. En Sabah Nur just likes to flex his power and while the other three Riders are accordingly awed by his godhood, War always seemed indifferent so it's time to change it. Bonus points if Charles overhears this with his telepathy, or even tries to specifically reach Erik to see if he is hurt and in need of saving.</p><p>Beta-ed by me, myself and I, so please forgive any potential errors. Also, Apocalypse is far taller and broader in comic canon, so let's just pretend he towers at least three heads over Erik and that his hands are so large they fit the circumference of Erik's waist perfectly.<br/>All the thanks to Jacky for organising this event, and to DoctorMagenta for adding this oh-so tempting prompt :3&lt; enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“I’m not here for them,” says the tall, dark figure who just stepped out of a purple bubble portal and killed a dozen men with a mere twitch of his eyes – the same eyes which are now pouring their hooded gaze over Erik’s apprehensive form, keen interest shimmering in their bottomless depths. “I’m here for <em>you</em>.”</p><p>Erik’s breath halts, stutters in his throat. He’s impressed, yes. This man, this mutant, this <em>unearthly apparition</em> is unlike anything he has ever beheld – more imposing than any human state leader, wielding power of unimaginable scope without so much as an afterthought. A God in his own right.</p><p>And yet, Erik is certainly not awed. There is no place for awe in his life right now.</p><p>So, when the looming mutant steps back among his three strangely clothed companions, holds out his hand with a smile that betrays how certain he is that Erik will accept it and says, “Come and see,” he does not take it. He doesn’t even spare it a second glance, merely takes a step forward, and another one, until the sparkling dome closes over his head and the world – the soil on which he saw his daughter be born and grow up and die – falls away and is replaced with darkness.</p><p>One God has already abandoned him. The factory workers’ bodies in the industrial cement are already cooling. The police constables’ blood is clotting on the silver locket in Erik’s cramped fist. And somewhere under the canopies of the Polish woods shedding their leaves, the remnants of a lullaby are still tangled in the naked branches while two freshly filled graves are being covered by gold and crimson.</p><p>So, as Erik follows a new God into the unknown, he thinks it’s only fair that he does not get his expectations up.</p><p> </p><p>War is indifferent to En Sabah Nur.</p><p>En Sabah Nur feels it when he takes the tedious affair of killing the weaklings who wronged him from War’s hands. He feels it when he reaches inside of War’s pain and anger and extracts the place where they – and the mutant’s powers – were born. He feels it even as War’s hand trembles beneath his against the soil of a strange land soaked with the pain of a people, as War cries out in fear and shame and grief, as he shakes apart as much as his powers are shaken apart, only to be put together anew – better, stronger, <em>fitter</em> – by En Sabah Nur himself.</p><p>Death, Pestilence, Famine – all of them utterly devoted, they look upon him as their leader, their father, their all-powerful salvation. And yet, War – after Famine the horseman with the most untapped potential – has the gall to be <em>indifferent</em> to En Sabah Nur.</p><p>He feels it, and he knows it, and it irks him. And most of all, it calls for a change.</p><p> </p><p>After Auschwitz, Erik’s skin feels three sizes too small.</p><p>All things metal sing to him, a bitter-sweet, dark melody twisting overwhelmingly in his ears, and every time he closes his eyes, he <em>sees</em> the magnetic fields surrounding them, sees as they twist and shift whenever he so much as twitches a finger. And his sense of balance is off: Every step he takes, he has to steady himself, remember that it’s not the ground beneath his feet which is shifting but his perception of Earth’s magnetism all around him. More than once he stumbles, trips, almost loses his balance entirely – none of En Sabah Nur’s disciples seem to mind, their stares going right through him and his struggles as though captivated by spheres beyond his mortal imagination.</p><p>But this, he can bear. This, he has a way of fixing, of getting used to – getting used to his body’s hindering reactions started with his and his family’s arrival in the KZ and never ceased, an endless learning curve now for longer than he can remember.</p><p>What he cannot – will not – get used to, however, is the realisation which seems to have taken up permanent residence in his mind. An undercurrent to his every thought, it is there, creeping up on him the moment he starts to forget, gnawing into his bones, burrowing into his hindbrain like an itch he can’t scratch, except that it’s worse than an itch, worse than a cut or a tear or any wound an earthly weapon could deal him.</p><p>Magda is dead, and Nina is gone. His wife and his daughter, the two lights which burned so brightly they eclipsed every sorrow and regret of his past life, are no more.</p><p>He should not walk. He should not breathe. He should not live on as he does, should be laying in the clammy dirt with them, his skin cold and his eyes sightless as the rain falls on the slippery leaves over their heads and trickles slowly, steadily down through the soil onto their rigid faces.</p><p>He should not feel as numb and indifferent as he does.</p><p>(Later, he will only remember snippets of that day, snapshots and vignettes as though taken with a polaroid camera, because that’s what brains do when the people you love die – they forget. They forget so they can to protect themselves from the worst of the hurt. Only the vague sense of something big, something all-important suddenly gone missing remains.)</p><p> </p><p>When they step from the lead-grey glare of a cloudy afternoon into the twilight of a vast, abandoned hall – a <em>warehouse</em>, En Sabah Nur recalls when he sifts through his memory of what he picked up after he woke up and Famine showed him the world as it is now – War is still wide-eyed and trembling, swaying where he stands on unsteady legs. His pale gaze goes beyond the gloom of dusty corners, and his breath comes in ragged bursts from his chest, congeals in the clammy air like the spectres of happier days long past. With his powers magnified a thousandfold, he burns brighter in En Sabah Nur’s inner eye than a lone torch in the foreboding blackness of a pyramid’s tomb chamber.</p><p>Though he is a God, En Sabah Nur desires War. And he desires War’s admiration.</p><p> </p><p>Erik doesn’t flinch when his new God’s heavy steps come up behind him and the warm dryness of his palms descends to wrap around his shoulder, his upper arms. Their grip is gentle and unyielding.</p><p>He did not anticipate this, yet he certainly took it into consideration. That drilling look, that poised curl of lips, those hands ready to hold and take and <em>take</em> he has already seen before – more times than he could count and directed at him more often than is considered decent in this age. He only really liked it once.</p><p>With silent resignation, he leans into En Sabah Nur’s grasp and sighs, gently.</p><p>
  <em>I was not there for you, my son. But I am here now. </em>
</p><p>He’s not sure if those words were meant to comfort him or buy him over. He finds he does not care.</p><p>“Come with me, my child,” says the God now, and even as he supports Erik so he can stumble along by his side, nausea rearing its head in his belly at the jostling of his surroundings, the floor in front of them comes alive. Concrete turns to gravel, and gravel turns to sand and travels upwards, no longer held in check by Earth’s gravity. A bedframe forms while blankets and pillows congeal, and the last thread of the silk-and-linen throw shifts into place just as Erik’s knees hit the mattress and he sinks down onto its surreal softness.</p><p>He twists around to see En Sabah Nur loom over him, a satisfied glimmer to his pupil-less eyes.</p><p>Sliding upwards on the bed and laying down, sweet, inviting and utterly pliable, comes more easily to Erik than it should.</p><p> </p><p>Raven’s attempt at getting Charles to look Erik up with Cerebro becomes redundant when in the middle of her appeal, her brother pales and puts two fingers to his temple.</p><p>A whispered “Erik” falls from his lips like dying autumn leaves from a branch. Raven’s stomach falls, too, past her knees straight into the tips of her (not-blue) toes.</p><p>“Charles,” she presses again, “you can help me find him before they do.”</p><p>Her brother’s eyes are very wide and very blue and very scared when he looks up to meet her gaze and says, “I think I already have.”</p><p> </p><p>War is like wax beneath En Sabah Nur’s hands.</p><p>A shudder goes through the mutant’s lithe body when Apocalypse hoists a knee onto the mattress and perches over him, not touching, just looking. Then, with a twitch of his fingers, the strange fabric of this age’s clothes dissolves and War is left bare and vulnerable on his back, a strangled gasp tumbling from his lips, eyes glinting white like those of a hunted animal. His ribcage heaves up and down, streaked with scars both old and new.</p><p>He looks like En Sabah Nur could kill him so easily. Like he could cup War’s head in one hand and squeeze, crack it like a raw egg, could wrap his fingers around his slender neck and let the man suffocate while he watches.</p><p>But En Sabah Nur’s touch is gentle when he first cups War’s cheek and feels the raw power his fourth Horseman holds thrumming beneath his fingertips – a power which will reign by his side once they have sifted the chaff from the wheat, pulled the festering weaklings from the ground and built the world anew on top of their bones. A power which will do so willingly and will shine its admiration upon no one but En Sabah Nur.</p><p>War leans into Apocalypse’s touch, gaze far away as a single tear detaches itself from his eyelashes and trickles down over his cheekbone, brilliant in the dusty twilight of the hall.</p><p>En Sabah Nur leans down to catch it with his lips, savours the tang of salt on his tongue before he moves on to War’s lips – gentle, careful not to bruise. A strangled, helpless moan escapes the man beneath him.</p><p>“No,” he rasps suddenly, hands grappling for En Sabah Nur’s wrist by his side, “no. Make me feel it, please, <em>please</em>.” His grip is dry and tight, desperation leaking from his eyes as his bared hips buck under Apocalypse’s loins.</p><p>En Sabah Nur stills. He does not want to damage the tool which might be most useful to him in battle – and yet, if he was able to damage War, it would only reveal how useless, how unfit for survival the mutant really is.</p><p>When his hands come down to part War’s thighs this time, he is no longer gentle. He is no longer careful not to leave bruises, does no longer moderate the strength of his grip, does not care for War’s moans of pleasure intermingling with his cries of pain as he opens him up and sinks into his brittle heat.</p><p>War asked to be awed. So, En Sabah Nur makes War feel it.</p><p> </p><p>“The CIA would kill for this.”</p><p>Charles wants to smile humorously at Moira’s words, he really does. He wants to turn around and make a good quip, keep up his façade of casual flirtation and professional knowledgeability. He wants to be a normal man, in love with a beautiful woman so no one will question the realness of their relationship.</p><p>But he is no normal man, and the one human being he is connected to in a way which outshines even his brotherly love for Raven is half-way around the world and in deep, deep trouble.</p><p>“I know they would,” he hears himself say even as the thoughts of millions of people are being poured into his mind, blurring the borders of who he is and what he knows – waves crashing onto a lonely sandbank out in the ocean, taking and adding grain after grain until all he feels is <em>them</em>.</p><p>Raven’s hand comes down to squeeze his shoulder and he sighs, recalling the jolt of Erik’s <em>fear-loss-confusion-anger-pain-numbness</em> he picked up only minutes ago. It once again proves how remarkable the telepathic mind is, how it will home in on a beloved one’s distress signal even though it has been years, decades even.</p><p>“Where are you, Erik?” he mutters, and even as he poses the question, the answer unfolds in front of him in all its terrible, breath-snatching glory.</p><p> </p><p>Erik wants to forget.</p><p>He keeps thinking about the people he lost, the ones who wronged him and the ones he wronged. And almost like an afterthought, his mind settles on the one man he hasn’t thought about in years and yet has thought about every minute every day since he stepped off American soil.</p><p>
  <em>Charles. </em>
</p><p>Above him, his new God is moving. The only thing gentle about him is when he puts a shushing finger to Erik’s lips, every time Erik can’t help crying out as another spark of white-hot pleasure-pain travels up his spine to jostle his head, make him see stars. His cheeks – the cool silk of the throw pillows burning on them whenever one of Apocalypse’s thrusts sends him skidding a few inches – are wet for a reason he can’t recall, and En Sabah Nur’s grip on his waist and wrists and thighs is sure to leave bruises for days. Inside him, his God is searing, melting Erik’s insides as he drives into him without mercy, relentlessly opens him up until all Erik can feel is the pain and the too-much pleasure and the tang of blood like molten iron on his tongue.</p><p>
  <em>Charles. </em>
</p><p>He wants to forget. He wants to forget so desperately, so he doesn’t have to feel so numb and so raw anymore, and yet, he remembers.</p><p><em>Charles</em>, he thinks, <em>Charles</em>, over and over again, <em>Charles</em>, and at last he has forgotten about his family for one blessed heart-beat, can pretend that Magda is still sitting in the sunlit garden under the elder bush, a book in her hand and Nina in her lap, Nina who is listening to the ants in the grass and the chicken in their den-</p><p>Just as he feels his God arriving at the cusp of his release, Erik receives an answer and the pain comes cascading back in.</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>Erik. Oh god, Erik. </em>
</p><p>Raven’s hand is still gripping his shoulder, and Hank is talking to him, brows furrowed in confusion, but Charles shakes his head. <em>No. </em>He can’t hear right now, can’t listen, can only focus on that one bright spot of consciousness somewhere in Eastern Europe.</p><p>He knows that mind. He knows that pain, that anger, and he knows that body, in and out, every scar, every tender spot, knows how it feels when it rests, when it fights, when it (pardon the language) fucks – but he has never known it when it is being <em>used</em>.</p><p><em>Erik</em>, he calls, <em>Erik, what is happening, are you hurt, can I help, you know I can- </em></p><p><em>Leave</em>, Erik says, <em>leave</em>. His thoughts are one desperate growl, even as another one of those awful assaults comes battering against the shore of Charles’ mind, more pain than arousal now. <em>Just leave and let me forget, Charles. </em></p><p>By the time the meaning of those words registers, Charles’ attention has already been snatched by a presence beyond Erik – the presence making his old friend feel all that hurt, all that pleasure, the one who has him pinned down against cool sheets of linen and silk by his wrists and who is so searing, burning so brightly that Charles has to draw back with a gasp.</p><p>“Raven,” he says as the world comes rushing back in, “he’s not alone.”</p><p> </p><p>En Sabah Nur climaxes with a sigh, his seed coating War’s insides like a benediction. Beneath him, the mutant is all writhing limbs and keening mewls and tear-stained cheeks, eyes hooded with unsatisfied lust and one hand grasping feebly at En Sabah Nur’s biceps when he pulls out, gentle once more-</p><p>And he’s not alone. Not anymore.</p><p>There is something, <em>someone </em>beyond War’s eyes – En Sabah Nur can see them when he cups War’s jaw, tilts his head upwards into a lonely beam of light cutting through the gloom. Pliable, eyelashes fluttering like motes of dust in a breeze, War sighs and leans into his palm. En Sabah Nur’s release is leaking from between his thighs, finger-shaped welts blossoming on their white expanse.</p><p>Someone else is watching, petrified by what they have witnessed.</p><p>“Extraordinary.” En Sabah Nur wipes a stray tear from War’s cut-sharp cheekbone even as he peers closer, beyond the man’s pale eyes.</p><p>War’s voice is a faint rasp, hoarse from screaming, when he asks, “What do you see?”</p><p>En Sabah Nur takes his time to answer. And when he does, with War’s soft lips willing against his and the mutant’s slight waist encircled with his over-large hands, he knows he has achieved his objective – and more.</p><p>“The answer,” he says and watches as the indifference on War’s face transforms into awe.</p><p> </p><p>When Erik’s grief finally bleeds away, Charles vanishes with it. There is the distant sound of En Sabah Nur speaking, the rough sensation of his hands on Erik’s body as sand trickles over him, solidifies and encases him in an armour of a God’s making.</p><p>Then, he is alone. The world is empty. He walks arid planes over which a dry, blustering wind blows and he watches as nuclear bombs strain upwards to disappear into the endless blue and leave nothing behind but streaks of condensed vapour and humanity stripped of its false gods.</p><p>Erik does not remember Nina, or Magda, or Charles. He does not.</p><p>He <em>does not. </em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Kudos and comments are very welcome!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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